No, I haven’t forgotten about him:

Man, models who bring their own roofies, where the fuck are those parties happening. It’s like the Super Wal-Mart of rape, everything there in one convenient location.

First came The Sopranos Family Cookbook. Cheesy? In bad taste? Maybe. But last month marked the debut of “L Eau de Parfum,” inspired by the Showtime sapphocentric series The L Word. The fragrance, available at select boutiques, includes Angelica, juniper, cardamom, violet leaf, Florentine orris butter, vetiver, sandalwood, musk, and crystal amber.

Perhaps HBO can sell caskets inspired by Six Feet Under?

All around the world … It’s gonna be a better day.

Now who sang that song again? Oasis? Oh wait, that would be the song from the SBC commercial they’ve been playing every hour during March Madness on CBS. And I can’t get it out of my head.

Not that I think it’s the most annoying commercial of the tourney. No, that would be the Applebee’s “revamped” theme from Gilligan’s Island for their shrimp. Or at least that’s what I gather from the lyrics:

Just sit right back and grab some tail…

Coming in a close second is the ad for Papa John’s new “The Meats” pizza, using the Go-Go’s “We Got the Beat.” As in, We got the meats, we got the meats, we got the meats, yeaahhhhh, we got it!

As Andrew Dice Clay might say, “Yeah, I got the meat.”

Finally, there’s the Cingular ad with the Asian-Caucasian duo, the former with an up-to-date phone giving him scores, who’s going pro, and who’s not. The other is hapless but likeable. The question is, Why are they even friends? The Cingular guy might be hi-tech, but he is clearly more obnoxious. He’s got the place wired and knows he’s better than you. I hate those guys.

AICN has a summary of the script that’s basically Star Trek meets Top Gun, but in a good way.

I’d love to see this movie made if for no other reason than to give Paul Cantor an excuse to riff on Star Trek and neoconservatism.

One of the most interesting Box Office stories in recent weeks is the runaway success of Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family Reunion. The low-budget comedy which focused on the black audience niche debuted on 2,194 screens and grossed an amazing $30M in its first weekend. Who could have guessed?

But Madea‘s success might not be that much of a surprise: Madea rolled out the weekend before the Academy Awards and for the last five years, either Academy Award weekend or the weekend before it have proved very fertile ground for niche-market movies.

The 2005 Oscars were on Feb. 27 and that weekend Tyler Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman came off the festival circuit and went wide in 1,483 theaters and grossed $21.9M–another huge success for a movie targeted only at black audiences.

In 2004, the Oscars fell on Feb. 29, which happened to be the weekend The Passion of the Christ launched to a staggering $83.8M. It’s easy to think that The Passion was always a juggernaut, but at the time, it was pitched as a niche film appealing to Christian audiences.

In 2003, the Oscars were on March 23 and that weekend saw the continued success of another black movie (albeit one with built-in crossover appeal)–Bringing Down the House, which held on to the top spot in its third week of release.

Finally, in 2002, the Oscars fell on March 24, the weekend that Blade II–a comic-book movie that was, again, largely pitched to black audiences, brought in $32.5M in its debut.

These numbers don’t demonstrate any sort of iron law–we’re flitting between weekends and there are lots of other factors in play (Blade II, for instance, is a sequel)–but they do suggest an interesting trend: When the main body of the moviegoing audience turns its attention to the Academy Awards, an opening is created in the marketplace so that a movie looking to capitalize on a smaller, targeted audience can really make hay.

Brandon Gray has some interesting figures on how terribly the 2005 Oscar-nominated movies have performed.

Start with the total gross of the five Best Picture nominees–at $240M. Since 1995, the previous low was $306M. And Crash is, according to Gray, the least-attended Best Picture winner ever.

But the most interesting stat can be found in this weekend’s numbers, where it seems that none of the Oscar-nominated movies got much of a boost.

This runs counter to the work done by Randy Nelson of Colby College, who in 2001 determined that a Best Picture nomination adds, on average, $4.8M to a film’s cume, while a Best Picture win adds $12.7M.

Mind you, Crash should have expected less of a bounce than that, since it was an early release. As Nelson explains:

. . . a Best Picture nomination for a film released in the first quarter of the year is worth an additional $673,082, while the same filmed released in the fourth quarter would add an additional $7,830,000. The corresponding estimates for a Best Picture award are $2,737,124 and $16,030,730, respectively.

Still, Crash‘s $342,709 is pretty underwhelming.

It’ll be interesting to watch over the next few years to see if the 2005 Oscars were an aberration or if the disappearance of the Oscar bonus is another sign of how the economics of the industry are changing.

If you were going to make a list of actors who would never appear in the same movie with Vin Diesel, the second actor on your list–right after Judi Dench–would probably be Peter Dinklage.

A funny, but ultimately flawed, list. Sure, Ellen Cleghorne–we can all agree on that. But Jimmy Fallon? Don’t his guitar-wielding Weekend Update spots and his Red Sox “No, you ah!” sketches redeem him? I say yes.

A harder list to put together would be the 10 best cast members. And by hard, I mean that you’d have to make your peace with including Chevy (“Medium Talent”) Chase. Because whether you want to admit it to yourself or not, he’s on that list. Also–and this may be cheating–I’d include Robert Smigel, even though he’s not technically a cast member. And Hartman, obvs.

After that, the trouble is just holding it to 10. I now leave this for discussion.